Mercanta
Ensuring Authenticity
Creates another level of assurance for the coffee bean’s origin.
Speciality coffee harvester Mercanta partnered with Oritain to further develop a technology that can verify origins of premium coffee beans using forensic science.
Mercanta aims to de-commoditise coffee through buying and distributing global green coffee at a fixed, premium price internationally.
“By working together, with Oritain, we hope to bring assurances of origin to coffee and, therefore, assurances of quality, flavour, and sustainability,”
Mercanta will work alongside Oritain to help establish and build a global coffee database, mapping the forensic data of global coffee origins in a bid to help provide traceability and transparency to the industry as a whole; demonstrate compliance with sourcing standards; discourage dishonest behaviour; and elevate the reputation of high-level coffee origins.
“True sustainability requires understanding fine coffee not as a generic commodity but, rather, as a unique agricultural product with distinctive flavours, varieties, profiles and personality— many of which it inherits from its origin. By working together, with Oritain, we hope to bring assurances of origin to coffee and, therefore, assurances of quality, flavour, and sustainability..”
- Stephen Hurst, Mercanta founder and Managing Director
Traceability like no other.
Oritain’s unique methodology applies forensic science and data to detect naturally occurring elements in a product or raw material. Soil composition, climate, altitude and other environmental factors all reveal the details of a product’s origin - which we call an Origin Fingerprint.
Once we’ve created an Origin Fingerprint, it can be used to audit our clients’ products at any point in the supply chain - to clearly differentiate the legitimate from the fraudulent.